19

Ashton

There was no light. No sun pierced the ice storm outside the cave. Wind, thick and frigid, seeped along the tunnel shaft whistling softly as it drifted past them. Keeping an eye on the immobile Tremblers, Ashton panted against the cold biting his skin and rode out the shiver rattling through him. He paused at a sound. Deep within the darkness, the uneven noise set his senses on edge. Unable to see if it was above or behind as the echo warbled around them, he gritted his teeth, pressing onward.

“Do you think there are more?” Charlotte’s voice floated to him in the darkness. Wary, but controlled.

“If there are, I hope they are as unenthusiastic as the first one.” Ashton shook his head in an attempt to right his mind. Mottled with cold and pain, he fought to keep his wits. His ice-laden clothes crunched with every step, dropping sheets of frost at his feet. He slid with Charlotte against the rock wall, deeper into the darkness of the cave. Arm across her small shoulders, he tried not to lean on her as he limped. Crackling hair sticking to his face, he fought for balance despite his injured leg. Another knock deeper in the cave and Ashton’s hand twitched, reaching for the sword no longer at his side.

“You are certain the entrance is in here?” Charlotte moved against him, her grip steady on his arm. “You’ve been here before?”

“Y-yes, I believe so.” Ashton blinked the melting ice from his lashes. Reaching into his vest pocket, he located and lit the igniter. The shivering of his hands cast a shaking shadow on the stone walls.

Charlotte squinted, raising her hand as if the flame were the sun. The black rings once again lined her irises. The chill of her body next to his made him wonder if she, in her constantly cold state, suffered the bone deep ache that assaulted his joints with every step. “Are you all right…are you in p-pain?”

“Just slower.” The meager light from the igniter lit up the wisp of white vapor that escaped with her words. She nodded to the prone figures on the ground. The Tremblers did not move, merely watched their progress with unblinking coal-black eyes. “I fear I may be doing what they are. Shutting down.”

The shadows moved with them, skittering along the uneven path hewn from the cliff’s stone. Light for only a foot or two in front of them, bodies and menacing faces emerged from the darkness. A woman lay on the ground in the long white skirts and apron of a nurse, her face turned to the wall as her arms bent at wrong angles and twitched when he and Charlotte passed.

Ashton raised his arm, illuminating a figure curled on the floor.

A young man, tufts of hair missing from his head, grimaced at them when the light slid across his ravaged face.

Charlotte’s breaths paced up next to him, her eyes wide.

“Quiet and slow,” Ashton whispered. “Let us not rile them up.”

They edged past another Trembler.

It stood upright, frozen to the rock, its legs and torso encased in ice with only its thin, blue arms free. The poor man moaned, his face snow white and glossy as if made of glass. His eyes, unable to close, reflected the flame as they passed.

Ashton’s stomach tumbled, the bile rising at what once had been a man. “How are there any out here?” he whispered. “There was no one else here. That was the point of choosing this location.” Unless Hunley brought others in. More than the fellow escapees of The Order. Perhaps there was some sort of outbreak here? The thought made his chest tight. Charlotte sagged in his grasp. Already showing signs of the affliction’s grip on her, she could not run any more. This had to be a safe place. “It makes no sense why there are any Tremblers here at all.”

Charlotte shook her head, her calm almost as unnerving to Ashton as the Tremblers. She turned to face him. “Are any of their faces familiar? Could they be someone whom you knew…helped to get here?”

“I don’t know.” Ashton stepped over another Trembler. He was dripping. His coat, his gloves, his hair, all of it thawing as he went.

“It is all right,” she whispered, her voice eerily calm. “They are dormant. Like the animals at the laboratory.”

“The one you broke into with Riley?” Ashton asked, fighting back the pain throbbing through his thigh. Something occurred to him, an errant thought that he struggled to snag despite the weakness from loss of blood and cold.

“It is why I did not know.” Small tremors wracked her slight frame yet again. “Why I did not sense they were here.”

“I should have died.” Ashton turned, squinting back into the darkness from which they came.

“Well, yes, it was a close call, but…” Charlotte’s voice fell away. “What is wrong?”

“No, Charlie, I am not freezing to death in these clothes.”

“I do not understand.”

Behind them, a tearing sound echoed. Ashton froze, panting as he listened. Then he heard it. A shuffle. Faint, but clearly the footfall of someone or something.

“Look, Charlie,” Ashton hissed, propelling her faster down the cave. “I cannot see my breath any longer. My clothes are dripping.”

“Oh, no.” Charlotte cut across him, worry furrowing her brows. “You are getting warmer.”

“Yes, and that means—”

Multiple moans warbled through the dark. Guttural at first, rising to piercing shrieks.

Ashton ground his jaw, pulling on Charlotte.

“How?” Charlotte gasped next to him, her face pulled tight with tension. She winced, struggling to support his limping gait. “How is it getting warmer?”

“I have my suspicions.” Ashton grunted, shining the igniter’s flame ahead of them. Movement in the shadows—lurching, flailing forms loomed just beyond his sight.

Charlotte’s hand went to her head, the pain evident on her features. “They are waking.”

“How long do we have?” Ashton pushed himself, ignoring the pain flashing up his leg into his thigh. He fought to stay conscious, aware that the heat of his breath, the warmth of his blood, compelled the Tremblers. He released the igniter’s lever, plunging them into inky black. “We must be close to the end of the tunnel,” he whispered. “Can you sense them now, Charlie?”

“Y-yes,” Charlotte said, her voice cracking. Her body wrenched in his grip. She doubled over, a moan escaping her and joining with the others. “And they are…the need, it’s so overwhelming.”

The tortured moans rose again, the echoes bouncing around them from all angles, every hidden space. In the black of the tunnels, forms lurched out of crevices. Fetid breath blew from the rotting creatures, close enough to hear the snap of their jaws. A hand, slick with wet, closed around his neck. The Trembler’s loose skin slipped around the bones of its fingers. He jerked away, lashed out with his arm, and threw the creature aside.

“Hurry, Charlie,” Ashton urged, his face tight with pain. “Keep ahead of them.”

The squeal of metal sounded up ahead, at least a hundred yards.

Ashton risked the flame once more, and the outline of a heavy metal door appeared from the shadows. A sliver of light slipped across the floor. The wailing increased, the afflicted excited by the light and noise. In the meager light of the flame, Ashton’s eyes widened at a dozen flailing bodies. They wandered, gnashing their teeth, grasping with hands barely covered with strips of skin.

“Help,” Charlotte shouted, dragging him towards the light. “Help us, please!”

The door slammed shut, rendering them blind in the cave with the Tremblers. A metal bolt slid across, its finality echoing.

“Hunley!” Ashton yelled. He tripped, his bad leg folding beneath his body. Charlotte fell with him. He crawled, floundering for the door along the filthy ground. Cold slime pushed between his fingers. Grit bit at his knees and palms.

Charlotte’s baton ratcheted out, the pieces lighting up with flickering silver threads as they locked into place. The power crawling from the mechanica in her hand wavered, sparked out, and then glowed again more dimly. She was weakening.

“Prudence!” Ashton found the door, banged on it with both fists, yelling as the shrill cries of the Tremblers grew closer. “Let us in!”

Charlotte yelled, grunting as she swiped at the bodies closing in, flashes as her baton delivered ever dimming blows. “Ash,” she panted, going down on one knee, completely spent.

“Pru,” Ashton shouted, sliding down along the pitted metal to the ground. “Please…”

Charlotte’s baton flickered out, the outline of her form burned into his mind. She screamed, a sound full of pain and fear, and then nothing.